Well he didn't write any of them down until well-past middle-age I think at the insistence of his wife, but found that he couldn't remember the first few.  That's what it said on the website or on some CD booklet.

Didn't know about the transposition anecdote thoguh; pretty funny!

And they both did it for a complete programme at a Conservatoire audition at the age of ten ? Gerraway !

Ahem.

Hear hear!

Or Liszt?
Or Saint-saens?

If that happened, it would probably have been sometime between September 30th 1853, when Brahms first arrived at the Schumann's doorstep in Düsseldorf, and February 27th 1854, when Schumann threw himself into the Rhine - after that he was consigned to the mental institution at Endenich for the rest of his life. There was a piano in the room adjoining Schumann's at Endenich, and Brahms visited him there a few times, but I don't recall any accounts of such a story. It doesn't ring a bell - I'm pretty sure there isn't anything in either Robert or Clara's diaries about it, but would have to re-check.

No offence intended, Soundwave - and I do remember Mozart - and Liszt. I just thought that given the circumstances, both internal and external, of the Ornstein story made it worth mentioning. It seems that not everybody shares my amazement !

Ah yes - that incident occurred earlier in the same year. There are various details that are inaccurate in that account, though (sorry to put my own pedant's hat on): this was in a concert in Celle, rather than Göttingen, which took place on May 2nd 1853, as part of a tour by Reményi and Brahms. As recounted by the early biographers (and certified by a preview in the Cellesche Anzeigen of April 30th 1853, cited by Kurt and Renate Hofmann in their Brahms als Pianist und Dirigent), the Beethoven sonata in question was not the "Kreutzer" but the C minor Op. 30 No. 2. The piano at the hall was almost a semitone flat, and Reményi refused to retune his violin (bear in mind that already by this stage there was tension developing between the two - see below), so Brahms apparently transposed it up to C sharp minor. Reményi announced to the audience what was going on, giving generous approval to Brahms. The rest of the programme included the Chopin Polonaise Op. 40 No. 1, a selection of Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte, Vieuxtemps Concertsatz, H.W. Ernst Elegie, a selection of Ungarische Nationalweisen for violin and piano (see below), Thalberg's Fantasy upon the finale of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and a further work by Ernst, the Andante spinato und Carnaval von Venedig, as well as some works (exactly which is unknown) for ten-voice male choir. As Florence May points out in her Brahms biography, it is not know whether Brahms transposed the other pieces as well.

The relationship and collaboration between Brahms and the Hungarian violinist (who had fled Hungary, fearing arrest, after the reactionary crackdown after the failure of the 1848 revolution) was short-lived, but is of great interest not just for Brahms biographers, but also in terms of the unfolding of the 'War of the Romantics'. The two gave a North German tour in April-May 1853, and Brahms first met Joachim, who was an old student friend of Reményi, in April (probably at Hanover Station during their travels). Now Joachim had been leader/concertmaster for Liszt's orchestra in Weimar, and a prominent proponent of the 'New German School' centred around Liszt, Wagner and others, in opposition to that in Leipzig, which Schumann at its helm. Joachim left Weimar to take up a position in Hanover in 1852, and started to distance himself somewhat from this school; nonetheless, he was still on good terms with Liszt, and wrote a letter of recommendation for Reményi and Brahms to visit him, which they did in June (Reményi was also having troubles with the Hanover police, so needed to leave the city). Reményi was able to ingratiate himself well with Liszt, whereas Brahms was somewhat aloof from the older composer, despite Liszt's having sight-read through his piano works when Brahms was too nervous to play them himself. The famed story of Brahms falling asleep during this period when Liszt played him the B minor Sonata may or may not be true; it comes from the memoirs of American pianist William Mason, who was resident at Weimar at the time, but he makes clear that he couldn't actually see Brahms from where he was standing, and it was Reményi who informed him that Brahms had fallen asleep. Now after the incident at Weimar, Reményi and Brahms never met again, and became considerably estranged, Reményi later accusing Brahms of having ripped off the Hungarian melodies they used to play together for Brahms's own Ungarische Tänze and other works (it is almost certain that Brahms's 'Hungarian' style, which runs deep through many of his works, not just those explicitly identified as such, and which was the one aspect of his music that Liszt responded to favourably, has its roots in his concerts with Reményi in this year). So Reményi may have invented the story of Brahms falling asleep - there is no real way of knowing for sure. Reményi stayed on at Weimar, whereas Brahms returned to Joachim, and the two became much closer, forming the beginning of a life-long relationship (only interrupted during the sad estrangement in the 1880s, when Brahms was perceived to have taken the side of Joachim's wife Amalie when they came close to divorce, Joachim suspecting Amalie of adultery), and Joachim made a more decisive break with Liszt and the New German School. In September of that year, Brahms was knocking on the door of the Schumanns in Düsseldorf (despite Robert having earlier returned some of his scores unopened), and Schumann, both greatly enthused by the younger composer and also seeing in him a potential aesthetic ally, less than a month later published his notorious article 'Neue Bahnen' in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (the first thing Schumann had written for the journal, which he had founded, for some years), holding up Brahms as a prophet of music to come, and in the process of so doing striking an opposing position against that of the new editor, Franz Brendel, who clearly identified with the New German School.

By 1860, both Brahms and Joachim would sign the 'manifesto' opposing the claims of the New German School and the 'Music of the Future' with which they were associated, to speak for the aspirations of German music in general. Brahms's letters from around this time make it clear that he was most particularly opposed to Liszt, rather than to Wagner or Berlioz, both of whom he continued to admire throughout his life. The 'War of the Romantics' is frequently conceived primarily in terms of the Brahms-Wagner opposition, not least because of Hanslick's partisan writings in that respect; but from Brahms's perspective, the leader of the 'enemy camp' was Liszt. However, he later regretted signing this manifesto, and did not speak publicly of the matter again (though his private correspondence reveals much, including in particular his later violent opposition to Bruckner). In turn, Liszt, as far as I know, never played Brahms's music in public after this point, which is highly unusual considering that otherwise he would perform practically anything put in front of him. In the end, probably a clash of personalities, and a vital difference in aesthetics (Brahms believing Liszt's work to be superficial and ostentatious, Liszt finding Brahms's to be over-serious and earnest). But in many ways the oppositions that would dominate German music for almost a half-century have their roots in the events of 1853, involving Brahms, Reményi, Joachim, Liszt and the Schumanns.